the primaries are for whatever positions are up for voting- state and federal, there's two term lengths; 2-year and 4-year positions..... so every 4 years we are voting on 1/2 of all the senators, and every 2 years we vote on 1/2 the representatives (house members)
and of course every year we vote for city council, school funding, initiatives, and beauratic types like county assessor, public utility disctrict commisioner(the most important position here), etc -
so, this year in primaries we are voting for our parties' political canidates for three state supreme court seats, two state representatives, a senate position, and misc others
i hate the idea of 'straw poll' primaries, which is what yours sounds like Taw - over here in the US the straw poll states RUIN the presidential election every 4 years for the rest of us by selecting our presidential canidates - i really really hate the system that chooses men of convenience like bush and kerry over men of substance like mccain and dean -
IMO the system is ruined by the internal nominations for these canidates because there's nothing democratic about high-ranking party-insiders peddling influence. anyways, the media hypes the rigged 'straw poll' result (which is really just a rubber stamp for the man with the fattest wallet) so much that the rest of the _truly democratic_ primaries are swung in his favor -- thus the whole thing SUCKS at the federal level .... sheesh don't get me started on the electoral college
P.S. Indy11 sorry, I get a little testy when someone mentions the 'Green' party as a valid third party w/ no mention of the libertarians
Edited by - Cold_Void on 9/16/2006 4:24:10 PM